Why do we meet? That is a question I ask all the time. Why do we spend the time, inconvenience, taxpayer’s money to all move our meat sacks to a common location? It is because science is a team sport. From the days of debating at the Royal Society active person to person and person to group communications is vital for the sharing and discussion of ideas. There has been a lot of pushback on our science lately as not being willing to accept criticism and that those involved in the earth sciences are an echo chamber of self reinforcing tropes.

This is why we meet. To present and challenge our beliefs in a respectful way. Also, for those of us who work in large teams, meeting in person can resolve an issue that has lingered for weeks via email in a 30 minute sit down. This could mean 5 trips across the USA or one trip to a societal meeting like AGU.

I had debated the value of going to AGU this year. I had plans to go to the American Meteorological Society (AMS) meeting in Houston as I have a much greater leadership role in the AMS. In the end, due to losing one of our key staff to private industry, being asked to chair a session and a new mission, attached to my interest in Project Genesis I decided it was worth meeting.

First, on project Genesis. Bad data = Bad AI. More and more data is being enabled and collected by private industry. One mission I had this AGU was to understand the increasing roles of startups and established players in the private sector and which entities I should advocate for Argonne to partner with. I met with over 10 potential industry partners and learned about everything from the commercialization of OU drones with iMet to self driving weather balloons from Sorcerer.

I also had the distinct honor of seeing my ANL Colleague, Jiwen Fan, become an AGU fellow. Why is this a big deal? Science is built on trust. Being named a fellow of a society (AGU, and AMS for example) is the action of that society saying “This person, they have done some great things for science and you should listen to them”. Does this sound elitist? yes. It is by the very definition elitist. But when it comes to trust being elite is important. When I fly I want a top gun pilot, when I am under the knife I want the best surgeon. And when it comes to understanding how aerosols impact clouds, I want to trust the best scientists.

The other big job I had to do was helping to get the good word out about my primary sponsor, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Facility (ARM). ARM is user facility of the Department of Energy and is the largest open atmospheric observatory focused on improving simulations of the atmosphere on the planet. In order to make ARM impactful scientists, those who attend AGU, need to know we exist and what we offer. So, like my days, decades ago, selling furniture back in Australia for K-Mart, I was in sales! And the sell was easy: Got Science? We got data! ARM’s mission drew me to the USA and will always be home base. Also, we were letting everyone know we are running the next ARM Summer School on Big Open Data Science! We can’t train the next generation of Energy ready scientists if they don’t know what we are doing.

Now, yes, is New Orleans fun? YES! Is it a perk to travel? Yes… And I acknowledge that privildge. It is both a perk and a pain. A benefit and a cost. To say otherwise will be disingenuous. I love seeing the world and this is my fourth visit to the big easy. I love this southern city. The food, the vibe and, in December, the nice temperature! Conducive to scientific collaboration and good for the soul that has been incased in Chicago cold.